Poets in the Archives – the story so far

by Helen Savage, Heritage Office

Across the last year, attendees to Poets in the Archives have delved into Southwark’s Archives collections to inspire new poetry. We have looked at Southwark Poets Una Mason and Pat Brown, delved into Southwark’s Roman past, borrowed pamphlets from the Feminist Library in Peckham and taken inspiration for LGBT history month from the Southwark Sappho Newsletter. Here is a selection of the work from the group. We hope you enjoy.

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What does the phrase ‘towards the stars’ mean to you?

_{^{Una Marson}}

Una Marson was a Jamaican writer and broadcaster and the first Black woman to work at the BBC. Her first home in the UK was in Peckham. In 1945 she published a poetry collection called Towards the Stars

Towards the stars by Eugenia Sesti

Around the time that we were about to go on our first holiday in two years there was a lot of coverage for NASA’s Perseverance rover. Around this time, we also found out we had been in contact with someone with COVID and might have to postpone our trip. It dawned on me that sometimes things that seem impossible are feasible and sometimes a much simpler thing in comparison can bump into many obstacles. Life is not always straightforward, but we can keep on looking towards the stars.

The countdown
Has begun
From ten to one
Perseverance is in Mars
Its home beyond the stars
While a sneeze is all there is
Between me and Heathrow Terminal 5

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Rotherhithe

Canada Water by Eugenia Sesti

I’m a duck
Full on bread
Slightly stale
Slightly hard
I still want to taste each crumb
I’ll take all that I can get
The leftovers from your life
Fill me up
And I don’t need to search no more
I spend my time just hanging out
Waiting for the breakfast you forgot to eat on Tuesday

Spring in Russia Dock Woods by Nirma de Silva

Walkers stride jauntily
rejuvenated like patches of daisies on grass,
 scattered dandelions, hawthorn in white bloom.

Pram pushers in abundance. A toddler is allowed out
by a pond, unsteady legs, stretched arms
towards mallards. They squawk, move into water.

Parents point at prayerful cormorants
drying wings on logs, children observe a photographer
framing a woodpecker as a blackbird sings sweetly.

Small patterned wings flutter in a hurry
for nectar, whites drink their fill
from green alkanet, some rest on leaves.

Air is crisp, fresh shoots, energy flows –
willow in yellow catkins, horse chestnut in flowering
spikes. Pulling on leads, dogs excited by new scents

bark at squirrels that scamper undaunted.
Umbellifers spread white tablecloths
for picnickers, cherry adds cheer in pink.

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Roman Southwark

Roman artefacts have been found all over Southwark, helping us to build a picture of this fascinating period, and provided plenty of inspiration for this session.

Roman Southwark by Nirma de Silva

It’s in the fragments
of a terracotta tile,
red corridors.
In broken plaster remnants
of wall paintings
of scenery, gods they worshipped,
the painted walls of a wealthy house.

In unearthed pieces
of mosaic,
geometric motifs in red and black
stylised flowers, strands,
tessellated panels,
the floor of a large room.
It’s all there.

Imagine
     a central courtyard
          surrounding corridors
                multiple rooms

It’s there
strewn fragments of clay pots, vessels, brooches,
narthecia of perfumes, salves anointed in
public baths
built with hypocaust,
the fragrance, the indulgence
their way of living.

Each piece a part of an image
that expands
stretches
to a glimpse of an era
to form
a mosaic of Roman Southwark.

^{Painted wall plaster from Winchester Palace excavations from Below Southwark: the archaeological story by Carrie Cowan}

Cupid in Southwark by Nirma de Silva

I am alone but never lonely
in my mansion of orange and beige walls
where columns touch blue skies.
I watch all from my vantage point
Londinium extends on the north bank
Southwark becomes a bustling suburb
of terracotta pavements, public baths,
roads stretch far to the south.

My winged feet carry me past
 traders of salves, cloth, pungent salted fish
potters with samian bowls, drinking vessels for wine
public baths where perfumes drift

When people gather on feast days
in honour of gods, I celebrate in dance
on mosaic floors. Years later, I watch as my
beloved pavilion collapses in 300 A.D.

It lays beneath the gardens of Winchester Palace
Undisturbed, barren.
I wait 1600 years to see it again
Recognisable but faded, broken.

No longer my glorious mansion,
it will not draw me back.
Southwark too, I barely recognise.
You will not see me again.

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The Pat Brown archive

Peckham resident Pat Brown photographed and wrote about her everyday life and the world around her. These poems were inspired by her personal archive collection.

The Nightwatchman

Tall and slim
With pictures of petals
In mourning.
Shiny and proud
You stand erect and free
Just content to be you.
But now I flick the switch
Your light floods the room.
I can read
No more groping
For the words.
And when I am done
You take care of me while I sleep
A sentinel
You stand guard
Till another light filters
Through the window blinds.
When eventide returns
I reach again for book and bed.
Later you will comfort me
Watch over me
Before I start anew.

Herewith, elsewhere by Rowenna Mortimer

Herewith, inside
They point out what I wish kept hidden
Give voice to what knows only silence
Parade the flaw in what I believe precious
Read the holy words I forgot to cover
Speak of the sacred I failed to lock away
Lean forth in their space as if to tumble through
Into mine.
Elsewhere, outside
All is secret.

‘I was only copying the others’ by Rowenna Mortimer

I need to let you know
that what you gave me is
what you said it was, is
what you hoped
                               This is the medium 

show off to you that what
I saw is what I saw,
to prove I spoke the truth
I’ll capture that
                               This is the medium

turn the green shoulder, make
it face me, how close I
trash my reputation
against the sun
                               This is the medium            

force the confrontation,
own the violation,
I’ll trap a thing in life
then show the lie
                               So this, the medium.

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Southwark Sappho newsletter

Southwark Sappho was produced by the Southwark Women’s Centre on Peckham High Street from 1993 to 1994. The newsletter promoted local services and events taking place across London. We looked at archive copies at our session during LGBT History month 2022

Cut-up poetry by members of the Outside Project and Poets in the Archives

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Home

This session was inspired by from Alo-Wa, a black women’s Oral History group and focused on the theme of Home.

No Shoes by Eugenia Sestini

My grandparents moved from Italy to Argentina after WWII, and my dad was born in Argentina. When he was in school, the teachers told my grandparents not to speak Italian because it was confusing him, so they never spoke Italian at home, and they never returned to Italy. I think they were worried that things would still look like they did when they had left. They both wanted to remember and wanted to forget.

No shoes
Or washing machines
A ship
Across the ocean
The hope
And longing
New beginnings
With footwear
And appliances
A language to be learned
And one to be forgotten
Do we choose what we want to remember?

The women’s settlement movement in Southwark, the beginnings and legacies

Southwark Archives

The Time and Talents Association 187 Bermondsey Street London SE1

Blackfriars Settlement a short history 1887 to 1987

The Industrial Revolution created an increase in the middle classes who were both well off and politically powerful, but it also created a huge influx of job seekers to cities. London’s population grew six-fold in the century between 1800 and 1900; sanitation and housing could not keep up with the revolution’s progress. Many people worked in poorly paid, unstable labouring or factory jobs. As Charles Booth’s Survey of London showed, poor communities lived in the shadow of rich ones, untouched by the optimistic progress of the Victorian era. In the late 19th Century, reformers tried to improve conditions by breaking the segregation between rich and poor neighbourhoods – and more importantly, by giving a neighbourly hand up, not a condescending handout. This neighbourly help came from settlement houses – community centres – that relied on live-in volunteers to organise, provide services, and lead courses. These volunteers were usually privileged young people, who gained the opportunity to live and work in urban communities and broaden their horizons. Settlement volunteers and users alike shared their skills and knowledge to help improve the communities they shared.

A number of Southwark’s settlements were founded specifically to meet women’s needs. While poor women faced dire living conditions, many better-off Victorian women (expected to be decorative, obedient, and largely confined to their homes) found their skills and education going to waste. In 1887, a group of women, led by Mina Gollack of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), founded an organisation to help these young women of education and leisure use their ‘time and talents’ to help others – this ideal was so important that it gave the organisation its name.

Time and Talents London settlement moved to Bermondsey Street in 1899. It offered classes in arts, crafts, cooking, reading, and writing, a library and canteen, clubs for young people, and from 1913, a hostel even provided girls with a safe, supportive place to live. It remains a vital community centre for Rotherhithe today.

Other settlements sought to harness the time and talents of other groups of women. The Women’s University Settlement began in 1887 in Nelson Square: Octavia Hill was one of its founders, and Helen Gladstone (daughter of the Prime Minister) was the first warden.

The Settlement gave female university students the opportunity to live independently as they provided educational and youth services to one of the poorest areas of London. It offered mother-and-baby clinics, youth clubs, and workshops providing employment opportunities for disabled people. After the Second World War, its work expanded to other areas of the community, which prompted its renaming to the Blackfriars Settlement in 1961. Blackfriars Settlement is still an important hub for the community and beyond, located in the heart of Blackfriars.

Former home of the Peckham Settlement in Staffordshire Street, 1985

Visit from Princess Margaret, patron of the Peckham Settlement

The Union of Girls’ Schools Settlement (better known later as the Peckham Settlement) was founded in 1896 and first operated from Calmington Road, Camberwell. By the early 20th century, the Union of Girls’ Schools for Social Service as it then became, had expanded to include hundreds of schools all over the country: this made the Peckham Settlement one of the biggest in London. Its wide base of support allowed it to provide funds to other organisations, and pioneer social welfare: the Settlement’s savings club was a model for the National Insurance Act of 1911. In 1935, it opened London’s first nursery school, and a government sponsored job club – the first in a charity – in 1987. The settlement had royal approval, being supported by Princess Margaret until her death in 2002 and then the Countess of Wessex until 2012. Although the community centre closed in 2012, the Peckham Settlement continues to fund local charities and communities.

We have mentioned a few of Southwark’s historic settlements in this blog but we have a range of reading material on the history of many others. If you would like to visit Southwark Archives to view this material, please book an appointment by emailing archives@southwark.gov.uk.

Bede House Association Fifty Years 1938 – 1988

The Guild of Play

A history of the united girls’ schools’ mission

Collection Creatives

by Wes White, Library Development Officer

The Collection Creatives have been meeting every four weeks at Canada Water Library, hearing the stories of objects from the Cuming Collection from our Curator, Judy Aitken. Every month, the group produce poetry and artwork in response to the museum objects and the memories they inspire. Watch this space for a Stay-At-Home special edition of Collection Creatives that you can join in with wherever you are – and here is a glimpse of the group’s work over the last twelve months:

The Lovett Collection is a wealth of superstitious and supposedly magical objects collected by Edward Lovett in the late 19th and early 20th century. You can see many of the objects on the museum’s dedicated pages to Lovett’s Charming World. In May, the Collection Creatives saw some of these objects up close, and the group conjured up their own magicians, poetry and artwork in response.

Peter Le Petit

Helen Lawal

Roland Hallfors

Later in the Summer we met a collection of goddesses! – from the Egyptian Isis, to the Etruscan Leocothea and beyond. We were struck by the way these evocative figurines from all over the world and thousands of years of history complemented each other. The group were inspired to artwork and poetry.

Cecilia Sobogun

Helen Lawal

Farah Al Hashimi

Jean Bates

On our suitably bright day in August our theme was the sun – and the moon. We were struck by a ‘man-in-the-moon’ Christmas decoration with a gaping mouth and an insurance plaque from the Sun Insurance Company, among other intriguing objects introduced by Judy Aitken.

Cecilia Sobogun

Janet Dunning

Then in September as the schools went back, the Collection Creatives saw some artefacts from schools of the past – among them a school bell and an ominous ‘punishment book’. We also reminisced about our own early learning.

Wes Viola

Helen Lawal

Our next session was focused on teeth and tusks. In times past local docks were host to whaling vessels, and Southwark has whales’ teeth in its collection, as well as an elephant’s tooth the size of your head and a street dentist’s cap – a hat festooned with human teeth and supposedly worn to advertise his trade. The group produced art work and writing – we kept coming back to ‘big or small, we all need our teeth…’

Vanessa Bray

Helen Lawal

Alison Clayburn

Cecilia Sobogun

November sees the Illuminate festival in Rotherhithe and Collection Creatives have been part of the programme every year since 2017. This year the theme was ‘Trade’, and we had exclusive access to the old Office Mixing Book from the Peek Frean biscuit factory; full of the original ingredients lists for both well-remembered and long-forgotten treats. One of many curious things about the ingredients listed is the code numbers for different kinds of sugar… this inspired ‘100 Kinds of Sugar’, performed at Illuminate’s Community Show at the end of the festival.

Janet Dunning

Preetha Leela Chockalingam

Wes White

Wes White

Wes White

Wes White

We marked the threshold of the year with a selection of objects associated with thresholds – real and imaginary doors, doorways and keys; including an ancient key to Bermondsey Abbey and an even-more-ancient-than-that fragment of a doorway for spirits from an Egyptian tomb. Many of the group members kept their creative outcomes from this session to themselves – to see the full range of artwork from the Collection Creatives, you have to come along and join in! But we are glad to present this homely portal by Alison Clayburn.

Most recently, the group had a session focused on lost things. In 2013, Walworth Town Hall where the Cuming Museum was housed was damaged by fire. Although the vast majority of objects survived, one that was lost was a figurine of St Anne, the Patron Saint of Lost Things. This inspired ‘A natural selection’ – figurines modelled on an image of the original, and remembering things lost by the museum’s team and audience – by the artist Janetka Platun in 2015. The group saw these models up close and thought about the different kinds of loss that people experience. The responses shared here included a sketch of St Anne by the workshop leader, Wes, and a pair of poems by Jenny Mitchell. You can find out more about Jenny and her work on her own page on her publisher’s website here.

You can join in with Collection Creatives from home in our upcoming Stay-At-Home edition – look out for details on our Twitter feed and in the Stay-At-Home Library.

Southwark in Winter

by Emma Sweeney and Lisa Soverall

Records show that between the 15^th and early 19^th centuries the River Thames in London was able to freeze over completely. This only happened on average about one year in ten and London’s inhabitants saw it as a great excuse for a party. But why doesn’t the Thames Freeze any more?

A view of the old London Bridge in 1677 by Abraham Hondius

In addition to changes to the climate, there were several factors that contributed to the freezing of the Thames.  Firstly, as ice blocks formed and floated down the river they would become wedged in the arches of the old London Bridge (shown above). The spacing was much narrower than in later versions of the bridge. This blockage would then cause the flow of the river to slow and freeze more easily.

The new bridge, built in 1831 had much wider arches

Another factor to consider is that the stretch of the Thames that flows through London was wider, shallower and therefore slower than today. The Victoria and Chelsea embankments, which were built in the 19th century made the river deeper and narrower, increasing the speed of flow and preventing it from freezing. Also, the increased size of London has led to an urban heat island effect, absorbing heat during the day and releasing it at night. This keeps the temperature high.

Finally, the tributaries that fed the Thames, like the Tyburn,  the Fleet and Earl’s Sluice in Rotherhithe were all restricted to underground culverts as London developed. This reduced the influx of ice.

So the Frost Fairs are no more, but fortunately we have lots of images and resources in our collections at Southwark local History Library and Archive to show us how this tradition evolved over the Centuries.

1564 – 65 

Artist’s impression of festivities under old London Bridge, 1564-65

‘People went over and alongst the Thames on the ise from London Bridge to Westminster. Some plaied at the foot-ball as boldlie there as if it had beene on the drie land’
[Raphael Holinshed]

Contemporary accounts of this winter are difficult to come by. Walter Thornbury gives the following second hand account in Old and New London (1878):

‘A hard frost set in on the 21st of December, 1564. Diversions on the Thames included football and shooting at marks. The courtiers from the Palace of Whitehall mixed with the citizens, and tradition has it that Queen Elizabeth herself walked upon the ice…

…On the night of the 3rd of January however, it began to thaw, and on the 5th there was no ice to be seen on the river.’

1607 – 08

‘The river showed not now, neither shows it yet, like a river, but like a field; where archers shoot at pricks, while others play football. It is a place of mastery where some wrestle and some run…’
[Cold doings at London attributed to Thomas Dekker]

1607–08 saw the first proper frost fair with a tent city on the Thames. In Thomas Dekker’s dialogue Cold doings at London, a citizen of London describes the spectacle to a visiting countryman:

‘Men, women and children walked over and up and down in such companies; that I verily believe and I dare almost swear it, the one half, if not three parts of the people in the city have been seen going on the Thames.’

Old London Bridge, c.1610. The narrow arches were easily clogged with ice, allowing the river to freeze over

1683 – 84

‘Behold the wonder of the this present age
A famous river now becomes a stage’
[Anon]

The Thames in full party mode. Can you spot Southwark Cathedral?

London diarist, John Evelyn described the range of amusements on the ice this year:

 ‘…sleds, sliding with skeetes, a bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet plays and interludes, cooks, tipling and other lewd places, so that it seemed to be a bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the water’

Some of the stalls sold souvenirs like this glass and silver mug, possibly made in Southwark

1788 – 89

‘The Silver Thames was frozen o’er,
No difference ‘twixt the stream and shore,
The like no man hath seen before
Except he lived in days of yore’

‘No sooner had the Thames acquired a sufficient consistence that booths, turn-abouts &c. &c. were erected; the puppet shows, wild beast &c., were transported from every adjacent village; whilst the watermen, that they might draw their usual resources from the water broke in the ice close to the shore, and erected bridges, with toll-bars, to make every passenger pay a halfpenny for getting to the ice.’
[The London Chronicle, 1789]

A view of the Thames from Rotherhithe Stairs January 1789 by G. Samuel

1813 – 14: ‘The little ice age’

‘Behold the Thames is frozen o’er,
Which lately Ships of mighty Burthen bore;
Now different Arts and Pastimes here you see,
But PRINTING claims the Superiority.’
[Anon]

Among the array of businesses that operated on the ice this year was the printing trade. Ten printing presses were in operation, turning out crude woodcut illustrations and ballads. The route from Blackfriars to the South bank was named ‘City Road’and at one of the many stalls ‘Lapland Mutton’ was on offer at a shilling a slice.

Charles Dickens, one of Southwark’s most famous residents, is responsible for the popular belief that it should always snow at Christmas thanks to A Christmas Carol. When the story was published in 1843 London was experiencing fairly mild winters, but as he wrote, Dickens was probably recollecting his early childhood in the 1810s, when Britain was experiencing the last of the ‘Little Ice Age.’ Six of his first nine Christmases were white and one of these fell in the winter of 1813-14, when the last Frost Fair was held on the Thames.  

It was soon after this last fair that work began on a new London Bridge to allow for easier water flow. The selected design by John Rennie (who had designed both Southwark and Waterloo bridges) was completed by his sons George and John in 1831. The Thames in London has kept on flowing ever since.

Preserving Southwark’s Sporting Heritage

by Chris Scales, Heritage officer

30 September is National Sporting Heritage Day and to celebrate Southwark Archives is showcasing some newly-digitised photographs from the Phil Polglaze collection. Thanks to the generosity of Sporting Heritage and Art Fund we were able to digitise these pictures of Southwark’s sporting past that would otherwise never be seen.

Phil Polglaze was one of Southwark council’s main photographers in the 1980s and 1990s, and he covered local events for the Sparrow newspaper. His photographs show a wide variety of sports events in the borough including local people as well as the occasional celebrity. The newly-digitised pictures show Frank Bruno and Fatima Whitbread mixing with the people of Southwark at sporting events in Southwark Park, the London Youth Games at Crystal Palace and boating at Surrey Docks.

The photos are being displayed in Southwark libraries for Sporting Heritage Day on 30th September and will also be available more widely in 2020 when the Polglaze collection will be put online.

Athletics at Southwark Park, 2 October 1989.

Fatima Whitbread meets the crowd at Southwark Park, 2 October 1989

Frank Bruno poses with some young athletes at Southwark Park, 2 October 1989

 

The London Youth Games, 8 July 1990

Boating at Surrey Docks, 26 May 1990

In search of a ‘lost river’: walking the Earl’s Sluice from Walworth to Rotherhithe with the Walworth HAZ

by Walworth Heritage Action Zone Project Manager, Stephanie Ostrich

The Thames winds through the heart of London, fed by its many tributaries, streams and brooks. Though we cannot see many of these rivers today, they still flow beneath our homes, our streets, and our feet. They also leave tantalising traces on the surface that hint at the rushing ‘lost river’ below.

One such river is the Earl’s Sluice which runs from the heights of Ruskin Park to Rotherhithe and into the Thames. In July, the Walworth Heritage Action Zone (HAZ) and Southwark Council organised a guided walk of part of the Earl’s Sluice from Walworth Road/Camberwell Road to the Thames, based on the walk in Tom Bolton’s book London’s Lost Rivers: A Walkers Guide.

Our intrepid explorers began at the Camberwell Road entrance at Burgess Park: the former terminus of the old Grand Surrey Canal. The canal, built in the early 1800s, was a bustling hub of industry, moving goods from the factories and workshops of Walworth, Camberwell and Peckham to the docks at what is today Surrey Quays; it also ran parallel to the Earls’ Sluice and was our first clue on our search for our lost river. The canal was infilled in the 1970s, and now is highlighted by the straight path running through the centre of Burgess Park.

Figure 1. Burgess Park used to be a densely packed neighbourhood with housing and industrial buildings lining either side of the former Grand Surrey Canal. This modern map showing Burgess Park (in green) is overlain by a 1940s OS map. The Bridge to Nowhere in Burgess Park once crossed this canal. The Earl’s Sluice forms the parish boundary here. You can see hints of it in the oddly curved rear gardens of properties north of Albany Road. (© Layers of London)

The Earl’s Sluice once flowed as a river through the fields and marshes of south London; this natural feature made an excellent landmark and acted as a boundary along its length for several parishes and boroughs and was also the county boundary between Surrey and Kent. Another clue to its existence beneath our feet was found as we walked one street up, to Boundary Lane. Road names can be excellent clues to what once was here before.

Figure 2. The Earls’ Sluice once formed the boundary between several parishes and even counties. When the river was covered over, it became a street called Boundary Lane which is still the boundary between Camberwell and Walworth and the postcodes SE17 and SE5.

Up until the 18^th century, when Walworth and the Old Kent Road were small villages surrounded by fields and orchards, the river flowed under a bridge at the Walworth Road/Camberwell Road here and turned east to the Thames. It then flowed under another bridge at Old Kent Road. This area was called ‘St Thomas a Watering,’ an important spot on the medieval pilgrimage route from Southwark to Canterbury, made in honour of Thomas a Becket.  It is also the first stop of the travellers in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales where they draw lots to decide who will tell the first tale on their journey, while their horses have a refreshing drink in the Earl’s Sluice. At a site near this spot stands a former pub and boxing hall called St Thomas a Becket – now a Vietnamese restaurant. The pub sign for St Thomas a Becket is still there, a memory of what was once here all those years ago.

Figure 3. Rocque’s map of 1761 shows bridges crossing the Earl’s sluice south of Walworth village and over the Old Kent Road at ‘St Thos Watering’s’

We walked east along Albany Road in search of more clues of the Earl’s Sluice. In the past, Londoners did not think about littering in the same way as we do today. An easy way of disposing of rubbish – and of poo – was to dump it into the nearby river which would wash it out to sea. Unfortunately years of this meant our rivers eventually became open sewers! By the 1830s and 40s much of the Earls’ Sluice was culverted – covered over with bricks – which was more sanitary and also meant the land could be used for building houses over it. In 1858, a very hot summer made the Thames, which was full of sewage, smell terrible! This became known as ‘The Big Stink’ and because of this, Victorian engineers like Joseph Bazelgette were hired to build large purpose-built sewers across London; this included our Earl’s Sluice, which because diverted into the Earl Main Sewer.

Figure 4. The Earl’s sluice is still open in 1832, running alongside Albany Road, in the bottom left corner of the map, (1832 Plan of London from the United Kingdom Newspaper)

Figure 5. By 1840, the Earl’s Sluice west of the Old Kent Road, under what is now the Aylesbury Estate, has disappeared underground (1840 Plan of London from the United Kingdom Newspaper 2nd ed)

So our poor Earls’ Sluice became a stinky sewer in the 19^th century, but luckily for us the Victorian engineers left us some more clues to follow on our journey to the Thames. Large, green and functional, these stinkpipes jut out high above the street level and vent gas from the sewer below high into the air far away from our noses. As we walked along Albany Road, crossed Old Kent Road to Rolls Road, and turned onto Rotherhithe New Road and ventured to Surrey Quays we kept our eye out for this big green stinkpipes to make sure we were on the right track!

Figure 6. One of several tall green stinkpipes venting gases from the Earl’s Sluice and Earls Main Sewer which flows beneath them. This stinkpipe is on a busy junction at Rotherhithe New Road and there are many more along the Earls Main Sewer under Albany Road. These can be seen all over South London (photo © Walworth Society, Jeremy Leach)

The Earl’s Sluice eventually joins the river Peck (from which Peckham gets its name) in South Bermondsey. We followed it as it flows under Eugenia Road and Concorde Way, which is still a boundary between Southwark and Lewisham. At Oldfield Grove, we got a closer look at the Earl’s Sluice as it crosses over the railway line here in an unassuming pipe.

Figure 7. A glimpse of the Earl’s Sluice crossing the railway line in a pipe (photo © Walworth Society, Jeremy Leach)

At the end of Chilton Grove, we found the Earl Pumping Station, still helping to keep the Sluice and Earl Main Sewer flowing

Figure 8 Earl Pumping Station, still a part of the Thames Water sewage system

A detail of the sign. (Photos © Walworth Society, Jeremy Leach)

We carefully ventured onto Plough Way, which was once known as Rogues Lane! Here off a side alley, we inspected two manhole covers. According to Tom Bolton, after rainy weather, you may hear the Earl’s Sluice rushing through the drains these cover.

Figure 9. Another Earl’s sluice clue: two manhole covers showing where it still flows below out feet (photo © Walworth Society, Jeremy Leach)

Figure 10. In 1761, the Surrey Quays area was still open fields, with only one dock. The Earl’s Sluice ran next to Rogue Lane (now Plough Lane) flowing into the Thames near ‘The New Dock’

Our walk concluded at the South Dock, where the Earl’s Sluice meets the Thames. There is still a sewer outlet here on the foreshore of the Thames. Unfortunately we arrived at our destination 15 minutes before high tide so we could not inspect it ourselves. But it’s given us an excuse to return to the Earl’s Sluice in the future!

Figure 11. Where the Earl’s Sluice meets the Thames (photo © Walworth Society, Jeremy Leach)

Further reading:

London’s Lost Rivers: A Walker’s Guide by Tom Bolton

londonslostrivers.com/earls-sluice

stinkpipes.blogspot.com

oldmapsonline.org

layersoflondon.org/map

Letters from Ernie: Private Ernest Parker of Rotherhithe in the First World War

By Jennifer Jamieson, Archives Volunteer
With thanks to Lisa Moss, Archives Officer

“Just a line to let you know I am going on alright. Hope you and all at home are the same.”

In 2014 the letters of Ernest Parker of Rotherhithe were donated by his family in digital form to Southwark Local History Library and Archive. Ernest Parker was born in 1893 to Thomas and Sarah Parker. It is likely that he left school aged 11 in 1904 after the death of his father and worked as a clerk for a produce packer.

Private Ernest Parker joined the British forces during the First World War, and embarked for Salonika in November 1916. He sent numerous letters back to his family on Hawkestone Road in Rotherhithe during his time in Greece, offering descriptions of the conditions that he was encountering, his hopes for a safe return home, and always, caring enquiries as to his many other family members (he was one of 8 children!) His notes were always signed affectionately using his nickname “Ernie.” Unfortunately, just as the hostilities had ceased and his return home was within reach, he was admitted to the military hospital with pneumonia and did not recover from the ailment, dying there on the 4^th of February 1919. Right until the end, he was finding ways to send his affectionate best wishes back to his family, even asking one of the hospital nurses to write his final letter home.

Southwark Local History Library and Archive has many of these letters and Ernest’s Territorial Force identification card, showing that he was appointed to the Durham Light Infantry during the war.

At Christmas, Ernie sent his greetings back to his family, including this card that was addressed to his sister Ada, and an embroidered card for his Mum, Sarah Louise Parker.

Reporting back to his sister Beatrice (whom he called “Beat”) in December 1917, Ernie described his own Christmas season in Salonika, telling her “Well how did you spend your Christmas. We had a decent time here, turkey, Christmas pudding and a pint for dinner. The weather has been rotten here lately, raining nearly every day, up to your eyes in mud…”

In a letter to his Mum dated August 8, 1918, Ernie described his outlook, that he was soon “going to get leave, well I am in hopes getting it within the next few months or years. I am not sure which.” Yet a month later, in a letter dated September 14, 1918, he reported back to his Mum that “Well I thought we should stand a chance of getting a leave this year but what I see of it now I don’t think it will come off.”

But then another turnaround a few months later, as he wrote to his Mum on November 8, 1918 (image below), “As you say, we have been having some grand news lately. I don’t think it will be long now before it is finished. I don’t think it will be long now before we get home.”

He wasn’t able to get home for Christmas that year, but in January 2019, reported back to his Mum that his return home was within reach, save for a few bureaucratic details: “they have started demobilising from here and it is only by a bit of rotten luck that I am not away already. I received a letter from the firm saying that my job was still open but it was not stamped by the Local Advisory Committee at home and that is where the delay is coming in. A couple of chaps received the letters stamped and they were away a few days after. Some of the men over forty one are going home tomorrow.”

Around the same time, on January 21, 1919, he sent a letter to his older brother Tom, who was himself fighting in the First World War, showing that he was happily anticipating his return home: “Well old sport I think this about all I have to tell you now so hoping to see you shortly and wishing you the best of luck. I remain your affectionate brother, Ernie.”

Unfortunately, the documents in our collections then show that for all of Ernie’s hope, optimism and readiness to return, he encountered  even more rotten luck shortly after these letters to his Mum and brother were written. His Mum received a letter written on February 2, 1919, at the military hospital in Greece, reporting that Ernie had caught pneumonia and that “he is very ill, he is getting all the care and attention possible.”

But worse news was yet to come. On February 6, 2019, the hospital Chaplain sent Ernie’s Mum the unfortunate news that her son had died a few days earlier. In this letter, the Chaplain described how Ernie had shared his fondness for his family up until the end: “He spoke very affectionately of you all, and said he would love to get home. I did not like to tell him I thought he would die, for I did not want to depress him for fear it might go against any chance of recovery. I am greatly grieved about his death. For I had formed a very good opinion of him.”

Ernie had also made an impression on the hospital’s Sister-in-Charge, who also shared her fond words in a letter to his Mum on February 6, 2019: “I asked him the day before he died if he had been writing home, and he said “Yes”, so I said as he was not able to write himself, I would do it for him, And he was pleased, and said to tell you that he was “getting on all right” and to give you and his sisters his love. He was a good patient, always smiling till the last and was conscious right up till an hour or so before he died, which was just before midnight.”

Ernest “Ernie” Parker received British War and Victory Medals and he was buried at the British Military Cemetery at Mikra, Thessaloniki, Greece “with full military honours”.

Photo courtesy of Janis Birchall.

 

Southwark and the Mayflower Part 3: Rotherhithe

We’ve already explored the history of the Mayflower in Bankside and Bermondsey, and now we’ve come to Rotherhithe, which has more visible monuments to the story than anywhere in London. This is where master mariner Christopher Jones lived and worked and where the ship was finally broken up for timbers.  

Greenland Dock

Christopher Jones, the ‘Captain / Master’ of the Mayflower lived and worked in Deptford, yet his children were baptised at the parish church of St Mary, Rotherhithe. These two apparently contradictory facts help us to pinpoint the location of his home. We can tell from a map of Rotherhithe, drawn in the 1620s that the whole peninsula fell within the parish of St Mary, right down to the Deptford border, and that the eastern shoreline was uninhabited except for the site now occupied by Greenland Dock. A community flourished there, presumably because the natural inlet or creek could be used by ships. Thus the map shows fairly conclusively that this site was the only place that Jones could have been living. It is also very likely that this is where the Mayflower was berthed since the northern shore had no inlets, only a tidal beach.

However, the Mayflower could not have embarked with its cargoes and passengers from Rotherhithe. The Port of London tightly controlled all loading and unloading of cargoes. Furthermore, transporting passengers to the ship with all their possessions and cargo across the Rotherhithe Peninsula would have been very difficult. The only access from London Bridge even by 1696 was along the Redriffe Wall (which was only 10 feet wide) or along West Lane (only 9 feet wide). Historians have always been clear that the Mayflower began its famous transatlantic voyage from either Blackwall or Wapping. As Greenland Dock is nearer to Blackwall, this reinforces the majority opinion.

Christopher Jones Square, Lower Road

On the way from Greenland Dock to St Mary’s Church you might pass this garden, named after the master of the Mayflower. Lower Road contained an abundance of Nonconformist chapels, at least one of which had a connection with the Pilgrim Church.

St Mary’s Rotherhithe

St Mary’s Church, St Marychurch Street

The church that stood here in 1620, when Christopher Jones and his crew worshipped inside was built in the 14^th century. The building we see today replaced it in the early 18^th century.

Jones is buried in the churchyard here, as are some other crew of the Mayflower. A plaque was installed inside the church in his memory in 1965 and a statue was unveiled in the churchyard in 1995.

In 2004 a blue plaque was installed on an outside wall recording the connections between the church and the Mayflower expedition, which are not limited to Jones and the crew. The Rector from 1611 to 1654 was the Puritan, Thomas Gataker. He had many Dutch contacts, including the Pastor of the Dutch church in London and visited the Netherlands in July 1620.

The Mayflower Pub, Rotherhithe Street

This pub, which stands just a few yards from St Mary’s Church very enthusiastically celebrates the Mayflower story. On the wall of the restaurant upstairs you can find a list of the Mayflower passengers. Unfortunately, it has no real connections with the Mayflower but an inn (originally known as The Shippe) has stood in the vicinity since Jones’s time.

The Mayflower pub, c.1950

Sunbeam Weekly and the Pilgrim’s Pocket

This is a modern statue of a Puritan and a young boy surveying, ironically, the history of the USA since the Mayflower. Created by local artist Peter McLean and erected in 1991, it is a fascinating and amusing take on the Pilgrim story.

Surrey Lock, Rotherhithe Street

Rotherhithe was famous for its shipbuilding, ship-repair and ship-breaking businesses and the Mayflower was probably broken up along this stretch of the river. There was a large dry dock here by 1739-46 at the King and Queen Stairs and near what is now the Salt Quay pub was the John Beatson yard – Rotherhithe’s best known shipbreaker. In 1838 the HMS Temeraire was broken up here, and immortalised in a painting by JMW Turner. Surrey Lock, which now occupies this site, was built by the mathematical genius and engineer George Bidder.

Next week: Old Kent Road

 

More tales from the Mystery Object Group

by Wes White, Library Development Officer

Canada Water Library’s Mystery Object Group brings together creative individuals for sessions focused on one or more objects from the Cuming Museum, and other artefacts of local historical interest. The aim is to foster creative responses to the featured artefacts, and we share some of the outcomes on this blog.

Rotherhithe Pottery

The most recent group session was our second field trip, this time to the Rotherhithe Picture Research Library at Sands Film Studios. (To see outcomes from our first field trip, to see the press at the Printworks building, see our previous update.)

This field trip was part of November’s ‘Illuminate Rotherhithe’ celebrations. The Picture Library had a display about the 17^th century Rotherhithe Pottery, which operated on the site of the old King Edward III mansion house. This and other potteries along the banks of the Thames often involved people who had moved here from the Netherlands, and they produced ‘English delftware’ using techniques made famous in and around the Dutch town of Delft. Cuming Museum curator Judy Aitken brought a selection of such English delftware found in Southwark.

Water Sprinkler

October included half term week and as a result we welcomed some children into the group to study a replica 16^th century ‘water sprinkler’. We were all fascinated and somewhat bewildered by this device, which would have been used to wet dusty floors for sweeping. Placing or removing a thumb on the hole at the top would instantly stop or release the flow of water – although, as you will see in the writing, it seemed to the group to be a bit ‘over-engineered’. Seemingly these sprinklers were very popular hundreds of years ago, however, so they clearly made sense to our ancestors…

Hops Warehouse Lantern

For many years, and well into the 20^th century, the hops trade was a big part of the economy in Southwark. In September we had some examples of the trappings of the trade, including a sample packet of hops and a large candle holder. This lantern had spikes which would have enabled workers to secure it in the bags of hops – the group’s first impression of the device was that it looked vicious rather than practical, which again has certainly influenced our writing here.

The ‘Veedee Vibrator’

The sexual connotations in the name of this bizarre-looking medical device are misleading. This and contraptions like it were sold in the late 19^th and early 20^th century as a kind of mechanical panacea – purported uses included treatment for rheumatism, gout, insomnia, tumours, constipation, deafness… the list goes on, but you get the idea. The ‘Veedee’ part of the name is thought to be a reference to the famous Latin idiom ‘Veni, Vidi, Vici’ – presumably on the basis it would ‘conquer’ any illness it came across. Tempting while it might be to think that the manufacturers also hoped to hint that the vibrator would also combat venereal disease, the term ‘VD’ in that context only came into usage in 1920, some years after this was on the market.

The Poet’s Bridge in Rotherhithe

by Wes White, Library Development Officer

On Tuesday 5 December, the footbridge over Salter Road was named ‘The Poet’s Bridge’ in a short ceremony which also involved the unveiling of twin weathering steel plaques at its centre. The specific poet for whom the bridge has been named is David Jones, whose epic war poem ‘In Parenthesis’ was described by TS Eliot as “a work of genius” and by WH Auden as “a masterpiece”. It is a quote from this poem that now decorates the bridge:

“The returning sun climbed over the hill, to lessen the shadows of small and great things”

Jones was a visual artist as well as a wordsmith. These words are rendered in the shape of Jones’ calligraphic script and accompanied by a reproduction of his woodcut ‘Holy Ghost as Dove’. The panels were designed by the artist Parm Rai and finished at the workshop in Deptford. The work was funded by Southwark Council through the Bermondsey and Rotherhithe community council.

The local area is significant in Jones’ life and in his writing. A section in his other great written work, ‘The Anathemata’, is titled ‘REDRIFF’; and this features the voice of Eb Bradshaw. In real life Eb was Jones’ grandfather – he was parish clerk of St Mary the Virgin in Rotherhithe, and a maker of masts and sails in the Surrey Docks. Furthermore, a character in ‘In Parenthesis’ is given no name but simply referred to as ‘the man from Rotherhithe’. Before the naming ceremony, Anne Price of the David Jones Society speculated that this character might stand for the author himself. It is therefore very appropriate that David Jones should be commemorated here.

The new name for the bridge, though, can also stand for all poets, and the bridge already has a lyrical history going back to the start of this millennium. Every spring half term for the last seventeen years, the staff of the nearby Rotherhithe Primary School have taken to the bridge to read poems aloud. Headmaster Mickey Kelly – who conceived of and organised the naming of ‘Poet’s Bridge’ with assistance from the ‘Cleaner, Greener, Safer’ fund – describes “letting the words hang in the Rotherhithe air”.

The lines quoted from ‘In Parenthesis’ refer to the minutes before the ‘zero hour’ of the battle of the Somme – the moment when the whistle would trigger the attack in the battle of the Somme – when “the world falls apart at last to siren screech”, as the poem has it. Whilst harking forever back to this moment, the words find new meaning on the bridge, where light shines through the stencilled iron and casts shadows where we walk.